Michael Horton has been one of the most consistently helpful spiritual guides in my life. (And interestingly, was one of the few people that, when I expressed my appreciation to him, didn’t make me feel like a drooling fanboy. Thanks, Michael, for understanding how it works.)
So you should read this excerpt: On the Absence of Christ. (Actually on the Ascension, but you’ll get it.)
Michael is writing here in something for 9 Marks Ministries and he mentions a much needed word that is similar to a lot of the material in his best book, In the Face of God (out of print but available used- get it). It’s part of Michael’s ability to get the best of Lutheran and Reformation theology out there in just exactly the right way. While I differ with Michael at some expected Baptist-Lutheran points, that seldom gets in the way of benefiting from the kind of Biblical/theological correction he offers here.
In short, Horton is warning us about the current use of the word “incarnational,” and its tendency to replace the unique ministry of Jesus with the continuing ministry of the church. I don’t even want to know how many times I’ve inadvertently stumbled into this one, but it’s been too often. I’ll take that swat and another, sir. Thank you.
Jesus never said anything about the church as a continuing incarnation. Paul speaks about the Body of Christ as a metaphor. But the church doesn’t replace Jesus does in a saving, revealing way. It may imitate Christ, it may continue his mission, it may bear witness to him, it may obey him and so on. But saying the church is another incarnation ought to be a caution. “Be my witnesses….teach whatever I command.” A clear mission, but not a continuing incarnation.
I can still say that each of us incarnates the Gospel as human beings in whom the Spirit dwells, but there are important differences that should be emphasized. We can be incarnational, but make sure the meaning and limitations are clear.
In these days of the evangelical circus, pastors and churches are constantly claiming things about themselves that are crossing the line. Churches don’t connect us to God by joining them. Jesus is the one mediator and no church owns him. Churches aren’t where we exclusively meet Jesus. We meet Jesus through the Gospel in the power of the Spirit as God chooses. Churches aren’t identical with “Jesus in the world.” Some of the gifts, power and presence of Christ in his people are manifested in the church, but Jesus is outside of the church as well. The church doesn’t dispense Christ like a product. Christ meets us in some of the “elements” that the church possesses, but he can and does meet us wherever he chooses.
A very good word from Michael Horton, reminding us that being Jesus-shaped is a balance of the presence and absence of Jesus.
Great treatment on a proper understanding of incarnation. It has become a “sexy” word lately, and I have thought about this before.
I like your idea of the “evangelical circus”, because we have gotten to the point that churches have to have something unique to claim that will set them apart from the other church that is meeting in the school auditorium next to the school auditorium you are meeting. I wonder how much of this competition has increased since denominational lines have been blurred in the last decade?
In the linked article by Horton I found the quote
“The ascension of Jesus in the flesh opens up an interim within history that keeps us looking forward to the return of the same Jesus.”
I wonder if we have allowed our congregation to properly understand this odd place we are in? I have heard some explain it as a “beachhead.” To take on the view of incarnation that you presented, it forces the church to a higher level of ecclesiology in order to properly exercise as the church but still function as God’s people on earth. I think I may take a more RCC version of the church than you, but you raised some great points.
I think one of the most striking things about that article (I only skimmed through it, so I could be making things up) was the similarities he brought out between the “liberal” social gospel and “conservative” moralism. Thats something I’ve never thought about, but its true.
Conservative evangelicals love to talk about “reaching people for Christ” and what not, but it is oftentimes burdened with unnecessary “laws,” such as abstinence from alcohol, anti-abortion and anti-homosexual activism, and any number of other things. Whereas liberals and the more recent emerging and neomonastical movements, though the goal may be the same of “reaching people for Christ,” its burdened with a completely different set of “laws.”
Even when you try to focus on “creeds, not deeds,” it is easy to create a law concerning what specific “creeds” one must believe, and “reaching people for Christ” becomes convincing others of the heresy of their beliefs so that they believe like me.
To put it simply, when I think about the diversity in Christian denominations/movements and hear one group point out all of the bad things about another group, and vice versa, I can’t help but realize that we all suck at life.
Thank God for grace.
I agree; Michael Horton is a stud. In the Face of God was crucial to my spiritual formation. My favorite line is when he says something like, “There is a difference between serving God, which is religion, and using God [i.e. for a feeling], which is magic.” I also like, “Coming to God in worship when there is sin in our lives should feel a lot like sleeping with our spouse after having just committed adultery.” Tons of good stuff in that book.
That being said, I think he overreacts to the whole Incarnational thing. Maybe people overuse the term, but I think there is a strong incarnational motif in the New Testament. The Body of Christ might just be a metaphor, but what is it a metaphor for? When you combine that metaphor with that of the indwelling Spirit and the prayer from John 17, I think Incarnational theology has a strong foothold.
John 17:18–24 NET:
Just as you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I set myself apart on their behalf, so that they too may be truly set apart. “I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one–I in them and you in me–that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me. (Italics mine)
I think John deliberately parallels the Father’s sending of the Son with the Son’s sending of the church. Just as Jesus is in the Father, so the church is in the Son.
Matt quoted Horton as saying: “Coming to God in worship when there is sin in our lives should feel a lot like sleeping with our spouse after having just committed adultery.”
That IS an intriguing quotation from Michael Horton. Another guy I never heard of but should know.
I was blown away by N.T. Wright’s chapter on the Ascension in Surprised by Hope. I am one of those people that has so overly focused on the church as the current embodiment of Christ that I had forgotten to acknowledge the reality of Christ’s absence and the longing for the second coming. I don’t have the book in front of me but Wright challenged me to recognize that if Jesus is not in some sense now absent why am I so eager for him to come.
Thanks for this great link to some more reflection to reinforce that thought.
[...] Michael Spencer linked to this good read from Michael Horton on the ascension of Christ, and the work left to the church. I nodded along with Horton for his sharp analysis of American Christianity and its revivalist tendency: So when a conservative Southern Baptist like Rick Warren embraces “new measures” in church growth by advocating a vision of the church as an army of reformers who can end the plagues of disease, war, and poverty as well as promiscuity, abortion, homosexuality, divorce, and alcoholism, he stands in a long line leading from Finney to Strong to Sunday to Graham. “Deeds, not Creeds!” used to be the mantra of the social gospel of mainline churches, but Warren has revived it today as if it were newly minted. After a brief dispensationalist interlude, American evangelicals returned to their more positive and triumphant (postmillennial) message of transforming American culture into “a shining city upon a hill.” [...]
Thanks! Really amazing. I wish i could spend my time on writing articles…just have no time for it.